From delawareonline.com: Convicted felon. These two words can quickly end a job interview.

Some may consider this appropriate punishment for someone who is a proven criminal. But if you are concerned about reducing the crime rate in Delaware and the nation, those are exactly the people who need jobs, says Jack McDonough, newly appointed chief of the U.S. Probation Office in Delaware.

So McDonough's office has joined a national push to get probationers employed. The effort, called the Workforce Development Program, is designed to reduce recidivism and get ex-offenders back into the mainstream.

McDonough believes if you get a former inmate gainful employment , he or she is less likely to return to old ways and statistics back up his theory. If a person has a job at the start and end of supervised release, federal court statistics show, the success rate is 85 percent, meaning no new arrests. National and Delaware statistics are almost the opposite for ex-offenders without jobs: More than 70 percent of unemployed probationers end up back in jail within three years.